Weekend Roundtable: Show Us Your Rack

I thought it might be fun to play a little Show & Tell in this week’s Roundtable. We’ll give you a peek at the gear in our home theater equipment racks if you tell us about yours too.

I specifically asked our contributors to send me photos and descriptions of the components on their equipment shelves: Blu-ray players, A/V receivers, cable boxes, videogame consoles, etc. I did not require photos of speakers, HDTVs, projectors, or miscellaneous theater items, though some may have chosen to provide those as well.

Mike Attebery

This feels more like a confession than a peek at my equipment rack. We’re going to be doing some renovations on our condo this fall, so I’m considering putting everything in a secured cabinet after windows are replaced if anyone has any suggestions. In the meantime, this is my semi-baby-proofed setup:

Demon turntable

Roku

Apple TV

X-Box 360 with HD DVD drive

LG Blu-ray player

Satellite Radio

OPPO BDP-93 with region hack

Phillips surround receiver (Ancient… We live in a condo with thin walls)

I’m getting the upgrade bug again, so that display and receiver aren’t long for this world. I have a separate setup of older gear upstairs, and that’s where I keep my Xbox 360 and other assorted game consoles, my Panasonic TH-50PX50U plasma, HK AVR-330 receiver, and on and on and on.

The center channel for my home theater setup with my Roku 2 XS sitting on top of it

My Xbox 360 with controller.

Bottom shelf, from left to right:

Box containing 3D glasses for my VIZIO M3D470KD

The Motorola HD-DVR for my Comcast cable

Tom Landy

I wanted a nice, compact home theater stand and this is the one I went with. It has three glass shelves (although I’m only using two due to the size of some of my components) for equipment. Above, though not pictured, is my 50″ Panasonic Plasma TV. The first shelf has my Panasonic 3D Blu-ray player and remotes. Underneath that is my Bell satellite receiver box, and then the big ones at the bottom are my Pioneer AV/Receiver and CD player. Yes, my CD player holds 301 discs. Sure, it’s kind of obsolete these days since the Pioneer receiver has AirPlay built-in, but it still works great.

M. Enois Duarte

This is an older pic from last year, but there haven’t been any major changes since. The components are as follows:

OPPO DBP-93 3D Blu-ray player [Region-Free hacked]

Sony PlayStation 3 Slim 120GB Blu-ray player

Marantz SR6006 7.2 A/V receiver

Velodyne SMS-1 DSP System

Panamax M4300-PM power conditioner/surge protector

Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.10GHz HTPC

Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote

Josh Zyber

Shelf 1:

3D emitter for Sharp XV-Z30000 projector

Comcast X1 DVR

Lumagen Radiance XS-3D Video Processor

OPPO BDP-93 Blu-ray Player (region-hacked)

Toshiba HD-XA2 HD DVD Player

Denon AVR-3808CI A/V Receiver

Pioneer XLD-X9 Laserdisc Player

Shelf 2:

Sony PlayStation 3

Microsoft Xbox

Nintendo Entertainment System

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What home theater gear graces your home theater shelves? Tell us in the Comments. If you’d like to show us pictures, I recommend uploading them to a hosting site like ImageShack or Photobucket and linking to that.

About Josh Zyber

Josh Zyber is a veteran movie and video disc reviewer from Laserdisc to DVD and beyond. He's previously written for DVDFile.com, DVDTalk.com and Home Theater magazine. These days, he wastes most of his free time managing this blog and writing the occasional Blu-ray review for High-Def Digest.

36 comments

Scott

I was very lucky that my boss bought two really fancy, expensive Middle Atlantic racks a few years ago. He then moved and decided that he wanted to consolidate down to one rack and next thing you know, I have a kick-ass fancy, rotating, heat dissipating, more than I’ll ever need rack to hold all my goodies! I’ll try to go from memory, from top to bottom:

a second B&K 3340 (or something like that) 125 or so x2 amp for bi-amping my NHT 3.3 speakers

a third amplifier, some Carver amplifier that I cannot remember the name of, this one is used for zone 2

my newest addition, the Integra 80.2 pre-amplifier

Oppo BDP-83 blu-ray player (no need to upgrade yet)

Xbox 360 (hasn’t been powered on in close to a year!)

Directv HR20 (I think that’s the model number) HD box

Panamax surge protector/line conditioner (can’t remember the model #)

Apple TV

And about five or six more shelves for future stuff!

All of this going to a 7.3(I can say .3 since I’m bi-amping the fronts, right?) set up with NHTs all around, plus video from a JVC RS-1 (will be my next upgrade once I get finished paying the wife’s back to school tuition)

Dan

Adam, you mentioned that you are getting the update bug and your display is on the chopping block? SERIOUSLY?!? How exactly do you plan on upgrading the ninth-gen Kuro, arguably the finest TV ever made? Unless you are moving to a 4K panel (for which there is no source material), your comment leaves me bewildered.

Drew

The VT60 and ZT60 are both far superior than the ninth-gen Kuro. None of the 4K sets that have been released can hold a candle to either the ninth-gen Kuros, or the VT60/ZT60, or even the VT50. He certainly wouldn’t be upgrading by moving to a 4K set. Every 4K set is still LED-LCD, and prone to all of the same problems that any 1080P LCD set is. There are many aspects of image quality that are more important than resolution. Only OLED sets (once they are actually available in a flat model), and 4K plasmas (If they are ever manufactured) will be superior to the VT60/ZT60.

I tell you this as previous owner of a ninth-gen Kuro, and a current owner of the SONY 65″ 4K set.

Drew

Oh, forgot to add that the 65″ ZT60 is my display in my secondary HT. So, I can absolutely compare all of these sets and tell you that the SONY 4K set is nowhere near any of the plasmas we discussed. I even had a chance to take a Samsung F8500 for a test-drive, and it is vastly superior to the SONY 4K set. Again, resolution is only one aspect of picture quality, and it’s far from the most important one. Black level, contrast ratio, screen uniformity, and a few other aspects, are all more important than resolution. If he switches the Kuro out for a 4K set, it would definitely be a DOWNGRADE.

I don’t buy junk, and usually buy second from the top gear. Example would be, my tv was 2nd from the top, the only thing that separated mine is the top one has a 2ND Vga port and cost $200 more, other than that, identical in every aspect.

I would love to participate but feel it is sort of a shopping list for “come rob my house.” My Facebook status has said in the past “At home cleaning my guns.” I hope we all have a halfway decent alarm to protect our treasures and I would not encourage anyone here to say they did not have one.

Drew

The VT60 and ZT60 both offer discernible advantages, over the F8500, in every aspect of picture quality that matters. The only advantage the F8500 will give you is brightness, and given your dedicated HT room, I doubt you would ever want or need the brightness of the F8500. The ZT60 is only superior to the VT60 in a COMPLETELY dark room. If there’s any light whatsoever, you can’t tell them apart. I mean that literally. If you even had the light of a single cigarette lighter flame in the room, the ZT60’s advantage is negated. Hopefully, that’s helpful for you to be aware of. Either way, they’re both quite a bit better than the F8500 (I would even argue the VT50 is better than the F8500, as it has deeper blacks in a completely dark room, and more accurate color) and they’re an inch bigger, to feed that craving better. I really don’t feel that the F8500 would be much — if any — of an improvement over the Kuro.

Ross Gauthier

Jeff Shultz

Rather than rant about my over-the top-systems, I ask if you have done a final episode in YOUR Home Theater series? The last installment I remember, you were still in the throws of another OMG. How did things finally turn out?

August Lehe

My Display consists of a GT 50″ Pioneer plasma set sitting atop a DVOX 585 Surround Bar…(In 3-4 years maybe an OLED 55″ Samsung when the price comes down closer to $2,500.)

My custom-designed and built light oak equipment rack consists of A BDP 103 OPPO on top with a Sony Twin Cassette Deck just below with two Pioneer Laser Disc Players on the two shelves down, followed by a SuperBeta Deck and Finally a Mitsubishi Home Theater amp which will soon be replaced by a full-size Marantz Home Theater Receiver/Amp…(all shelves adjust!)On the Bottom is space for Laser Discs and Deluxe Blu Rays such as Lawrence of Arabia boxed set…

Dave Mueller

Mike (and someone may have already commented on this) but you should really move that shelf. You’ve got that projector butted up against the wall as it is and the shelf and books are blocking the side vents and making all that heat just swirl around there. You’ve created an easy bake over for your projector.

If you look at the pictures, I had to come up with a way to extend the lower shelf as I bought the rack before having purchased a receiver and receiving the Comcast DVR at my apt. I ended up using 3 styrofoam bricks, which I shaved a bit off the top in back in order to wedge it under the glass and then covered them with black felt.

I almost joined the party, too. I was beginning to type out my equipment. And then I had flashbacks of asking my fellow classmates to come over to my house to check out my comic book collection or transformer toys.

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If we could have a ladies’ line, where ladies would show us their (equipment) rack. Now that would be cool.

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